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Contrasting styles of how to cope with differing religions in schools were demonstrated recently in Massachusetts and Germany.

In Massachusetts librarians at Simmons College in Boston issued The Anti-Oppression Library Guide to promote equality and limit religious persecution. The Guide urges students to “refrain from using trigger words like ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘God bless you’ after someone sneezes because these words constitute microaggressions against Muslims. Muslims don’t celebrate Christmas. And the notion that God should bless a non-Muslim is offensive to their faith.”

The Guide warns that “even unintentional or inadvertent use of such trigger words could unleash a violent response that Muslims would regard as fully justified. As far as Islam is concerned, unbelievers are subhumans who must submit to Muslim dominance or face extermination. It is best that confrontations on these matters be avoided if at all possible.”

In contrast, in the Peter Petersen Elementary School in Neukölln, Germany the Muslim majority students routinely bully non-Muslim classmates for insulting Islam by eating non-halal food like ham sandwiches or Gummy Bears or for being Jewish. School principal Hildegard Greif-Gross complains that “the rights of native Germans are being abused by these ungrateful immigrants. We are giving them an education that far surpasses what was available to them in the countries they emigrated from. Rather than appreciating what we are doing for them they are importing the barbaric ways of the countries they left behind.”

Local Imam Mulhed Ashat condemned the principal’s complaint, calling it “an insult to Islam. Kafirs have no right to criticize any Muslim for any reason. Allah gave all the world to his believers. Her life is forfeit to the first righteous Muslim who chooses to slay her.”

In related news, more Democrat voters in America believe Muslims are treated worse here (56%) than Christians are treated in Islamic countries (47%). This is despite substantial evidence of violent crimes committed against Christians in Muslim countries during 2017, including 3,066 killed, 1,252 abducted, and 1,020 raped or sexually harassed, and 793 churches attacked or destroyed. Almost all of these crimes were carried out by “moderate” Muslims, not Islamic terrorists. In contrast, the assaults against Muslims in the United States has averaged 50 per year over the past two decades. A possible explanation for Democrats’ mistaken beliefs is likely the discrepancy in media coverage. Muslims in the US have been granted “victim” status by the media. Crimes against Christians in Muslim countries have been mostly ignored.

Conn Guv Says NRA a “Terrorist Organization”

Connecticut’s Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) called the NRA “a terrorist organization” and announced his state will “boycott the NRA.”

“Their defense of gun ownership goes far beyond legitimate protection of the rights of hunters and ventures into explicitly anti-government intent,” Malloy argued. “In their fantastical vision, citizens need guns to be able to fight against tyranny. If that isn’t an out-and-out threat to authority I don’t know what is.”

“Citizens owning guns may have made sense when we were fighting the British for our independence,” Malloy ventured. “But times have changed. Under our democracy, the government is the people. It is nonsensical that citizens would any longer need guns to protect themselves from government oppression.”

“Ideally, only the government should have guns,” Malloy contended. “The next best option would be for the government to extend the privilege to select individuals or groups whose loyalty to the government is without question. These loyal citizens would constitute the ‘well-regulated militia’ that government officials could call upon to put down rebellions against its authority—as the writers of the Second Amendment originally intended.”

“As Gov. Brown so eloquently pointed out, the so-called evils that Sessions claims to be trying to prevent are part of a worldwide evolution toward the more natural way of life being experienced outside of the United States.,” Harris maintained. “The notion that Americans can live above the standards that exist in other parts of the world is both selfish and unsustainable. Owning a home with indoor plumbing, heating, and electricity is a luxury that can only be allowed for a small elite. The sooner we reconcile ourselves to this reality, the sooner we will stem the necessity of people migrating here in hopes of a better life.”

Harris admitted that “the average American may be ill-suited to adapt to this emerging return to a more natural state of existence. Our saving grace, though, is that under our state’s open-borders agenda the vast majority of those entering the country from Latin America and the Middle East are ideally suited to this life style. So, there is a replacement population that is flowing into the country of its own free will. And I am proud to stand with visionaries like Gov. Brown and Mayor Schaaf who are working diligently to accelerate this transformation.”

Part of Schaaf’s diligent work included warning illegals in her city of the recent ICE raid. This enabled an estimated 800 to escape apprehension. Of the 232 caught by ICE, 115 (~50%) had prior felony convictions for serious offenses, such as child sex crimes, weapons charges and assault, or had past convictions for significant or multiple misdemeanors. “While the 50% proportion of common criminals among the immigrants rounded up by ICE seems high, let’s not forget that we force these people into the criminal classes by making them sneak into the country,” Schaaf reminded. “If we welcomed them in and gave them apartments, food stamps and other amenities unavailable in their home countries they would have less reason to prey upon our citizens. So, I blame Trump, Sessions, and the other racists who would deny these people their human right to live wherever they choose.”

Planned Trump-Kim Meeting Irks Soros

Billionaire donor to the Democratic Party George Soros is apoplectic over the announcement that President Trump has agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un within the next two months to discuss nuclear disarmament of his country.

“This never should have happened,” Soros complained. “I paid $30 million to defeat Trump in the 2016 election. I’ve funded street protests and riots to try to undermine his administration. I’ve been working tirelessly with the FBI and media to generate a scandal that will drive him from office. That this Korean twit would wreck my efforts by yielding to Trump’s pressures and threats is yet another unexpected setback.”

“We were so close,” Soros lamented. “The aid provided to Kim by Presidents Clinton and Obama helped North Korea attain nuclear power status. While North Korea could never conquer the United States, the possibility that Kim could’ve nuked Guam or maybe landed a missile within the US borders should have paralyzed any rational US leader. Trump’s maniacal and unfair threat to annihilate North Korea for any attack changed the course of history for the worse. It’s beginning to look like our only hope is for the US intelligence community to take Trump out like they took out JFK after he vowed to dismantle the CIA.”

Dem Promises Reparations by 2020

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif) promised an audience in Selma, Alabama that “we will provide reparations for slavery to all African-Americans by 2020 if we take back the House this November. We are going to divert those billion dollar tax cuts Trump gave to corporations and white people and pay off every Black man, woman, and child in America, except for ‘Uncle Toms’ like Ben Carson.”

Waters brushed aside difficulties in trying to distinguish between whites who owned slaves and the millions of white soldiers who fought in the Civil War that ended slavery in this country. “It’s not about guilt or liability,” she clarified. “It’s about racial equality. Those whites who died to free the slaves still had it better than the slaves did. Today’s whites have it better than Blacks. Equality demands that this disparity be eliminated.”

To help drive home her point, Waters targeted fellow legislator House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s $90 million in personal assets as “a pot of money we will be looking to redistribute among African-American members of congress. Lord knows I love Nancy like a sister, but she’s got to do her sisterly duty by me and the other members of the Black Caucus. Poor old Charlie Rangel wouldn’t have had to cheat on his taxes if he could’ve had a share of Nancy’s stash. It’s a simple matter of social justice.”

For her part, Pelosi pronounced Waters’ intention “noble of heart, but impractical in reality. Those of us in government have got to stick together rather than fight among ourselves over the few crumbs in my bank account. The Federal Reserve can print more than enough money for every descendant of a former slave to get a generous payout. There is no need for her to covet my money. My ability to hold my seat in congress and to campaign for equality is founded on the leisure provided by the income I obtain from my investments. Surely Maxine wouldn’t want to take that away from me.”

Waters tried to reassure Pelosi that “we’re not going to take it all. When you and I are evened out is when we’ll stop redistributing your wealth and move on to the next person in line.”

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect.

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.By John Semmens — Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News

President Trump’s repeated expressions of his dissatisfaction with Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ job performance is said to have opened a new avenue of investigation for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference with the 2016 election.

“We have two alternate theories we can pursue,” Mueller is reputed to have told his team. “On the one hand, Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation. This is prima facie evidence that he has something to hide. Could that something be knowledge of Russian collusion? Could Trump’s public bullying of his Attorney General be an attempt to intimidate him into keeping silent?”

“On the other hand, isn’t Trump’s attempt to push the Attorney General into an action he prefers not to take evidence of abuse of power?” Mueller continued. “Take Trump’s insistence that the Department of Justice investigate Hillary Clinton and former President Obama. Former FBI Director James Comey already investigated Secretary Clinton and found her not guilty. Wouldn’t reopening the case constitute double jeopardy? And President Obama has already denied any wrongdoing. Trump’s implication that his predecessor might be lying isn’t the way we treat former presidents. It’s destabilizing. It suggests that Trump himself may be a domestic enemy of our form of government.”

While Mueller is said to have instructed his team to pursue both theories, he admitted that “we won’t get much traction with theories alone. Media hype can only take us so far. We need a triggering event. The most obvious trigger would be for Trump to fire Sessions. Given the dirt we have in Sessions’ file plus the grievance he will feel against the man who lured him from his cozy seat in the Senate only to fire him a year later I’m pretty sure we can persuade him to cooperate with us. After all, Sessions has told friends that ‘working with Trump is the most humiliating experience in decades of public life.’”

In related news, Sirius XM radio host Mark Thompson complained that “Mueller is overlooking the fact that criticizing the FBI is itself seditious. It attacks the very foundation of our government. By impugning the reputation of this great agency Trump, Nunes, Grassley, almost the entire Republican Party, are clearly guilty of trying to undermine our form of government. If I were Mueller I’d have all these guys arrested and put Obama back on the throne.”

Guv Disputes “Worst Quality of Life” Finding

This week, a report published by U.S. News on the quality of life in the United States ranked the State of California dead last—behind even the renowned “arm pit” State of New Jersey. “High rents, high taxes, and insufferable inhabitants” were cited as key low points contributing to California’s last place finish.

“In many of the cities even cramped and dumpy apartments can cost thousands per month in rent,” the report commented. “It should be no surprise that homelessness in Los Angeles County has increased by 75% over the last six years. What is surprising is that public defecation has become the norm in many parts of what were once among the most admired cities in America.”

Gov. Jerry Brown (D) disagreed with the U.S. News report’s conclusions. “I challenge their frame of reference,” he said. “They’re mired in a myopic perspective that focuses on how much it costs to live here and have the amenities of a middle class lifestyle. What they overlook is that our state is pioneering the transition toward getting in step with the rest of the world, not keeping up with the Joneses in other states. U.S. News sees a rise in homelessness through a materialistic lens. I see it as regressing to the mean of how the majority of people on this planet live.”

“Discomfort and bad sanitation are the norm for most of the world,” Brown pointed out. “The easy life to which so many Americans have become accustomed is abnormal. I don’t see California as lagging the rest of the states. I see us leading the way toward a mode of living that is more natural and environmentally friendly. Living in a box in a public park or under a bridge has a smaller carbon footprint than busting your butt to be able to afford a mortgage on a house. I foresee an America where nearly everyone except Democrat donors adopts the new California lifestyle. I’m proud to have been able to play a leadership role in paving the way.”

In related news, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts to apprehend persons illegally in the United States “a shocking abuse of law enforcement power. These immigrants have come to America for a better life. It is our Christian obligation to provide this better life. ICE’s reliance on mere statutory law as the justification for ignoring this obligation is shameful.” The ICE raid in northern California that Pelosi condemned had targeted over 800 illegal immigrants with outstanding arrest warrants.

“Mistakes” Not “Scandals”

Speaking at MIT, former President Obama sought to convince the 3500 in attendance that “unlike what we’ve seen from just the first year of the Trump Administration, my eight-year tenure in office was remarkably scandal free. I admit we made a few mistakes, but nothing that embarrassed us.”

Obama critics might disagree. Fox News’ Sean Hannity rattled of a list that included the Fast and Furious sale of guns to Mexican gangsters, the failure to send aid to our besieged consulate in Benghazi, the IRS discrimination against political conservatives, the Uranium One sale of 20% of the US uranium supply to a Russian company that was brokered by bribery, and the FBI’s lying to the FISA court in order to spy on the Trump campaign and suggested that “surely this level of incompetence and/or corruption ought to inspire a few twinges of guilt, remorse, or shame. How could a person with a conscience not be embarrassed by some of these scandals?”

New York Times fake conservative columnist David Brooks questioned whether Hannity’s list contained any real scandals. “First, no one in the genuine media has called these events scandals. Second, one could make the case that they were all successful policy initiatives. Was the sale of guns to Mexican drug cartels really a scandal? Haven’t those cartels helped reduce illegal immigration by murdering thousands who might otherwise have sneaked across our border? And didn’t the bribes obtained in the Uranium One deal bring millions of dollars into the US economy? To label all of these unconventional transactions ‘scandals’ strikes me as overly simplistic. Life is more complex than the binomial right vs. wrong choice that people like Hannity perceive. Let’s not forget that it was Obama, not Hannity, who won a Nobel Peace Prize. Doesn’t this tell us who we should believe?”

Sheriff Defends Holding Officers Out of Line of Fire

Broward County sheriff Scott Israel rebuffed criticism of the decision to order his deputies to “form a perimeter” rather than enter Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in order to confront Nikolas Cruz as he shot 17 students and teachers to death.

“It’s a simple calculation of risk vs. reward,” Israel argued. “Anyone I might’ve sent in ran the risk of being shot before he could take any useful action to neutralize the threat. Each of my deputies is a highly trained and valuable asset to the community. The loss of any one of these men would be a significant loss to society. I had to weigh this against the relatively lower social value of the students who might get shot if my deputies remained outside.”

“For the most part, students are a liability rather than an asset to society,” the Sheriff estimated. “They have to be maintained and supported at great cost to others. They contribute little toward the upkeep of the community. So, in my judgment I could not justify risking the lives of the more valuable police officers in the uncertain hope that such a decision might save the lives of a few less valuable students.”

“In the aftermath, I think my judgment was vindicated,” Israel contended. “No law enforcement personnel were injured. The loss of lives inside the school were a tolerable number. As we have since seen, the school has been able to resume its normal activities, proving that those killed by the gunmen were not vital to the school’s mission or survival. The icing on the cake was that Cruz was peacefully apprehended without incident outside the school. He confessed to the crime and the case is solved without requiring a messy and expensive investigation. I’d say the outcome has demonstrated the amazing leadership I have provided as Broward County’s sheriff.”

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect.

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.

By John Semmens — Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News

The revelation that the site of the most recent school massacre had an armed police officer assigned to the school “disproves the conservative contention that ‘hardening the target’ is the way to go if we want to stop these kinds of gun tragedies,” says Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn).

The Senator was referring to the fact that an officer from the Broward County Sheriff’s office was permanently assigned to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida where expelled student Nikolas Cruz killed 17 students and faculty members last week. The assigned officer, Deputy Scot Peterson, declined to engage the shooter and opted to remain outside while the massacre was unfolding.

“The deputy understandably chose to wait in a safe place for back-up to arrive rather than risk his life in what might have been a futile attempt to stop the shooter,” Blumenthal observed. “I think this shows the flaw in President Trump’s suggestion that qualified and trained faculty members should carry concealed weapons to deter armed intruders. A better plan would be to eliminate guns from our society. If no one had guns, no one could be shot. I think that’s the way to go if we really want to end these senseless crimes.”

Elie Mystal, editor of the “Above the Law” legal blog, backed Blumenthal’s argument, saying that “arming teachers would have a disproportionate racial impact. More black students will end up being murdered by their teachers. Statistics already show that minority students are punished at rates far exceeding their proportion of the school population. Arming teachers will just ratchet up the penalties from detention to death.” On the other hand, if Assistant Football Coach Aaron Feis had been armed he would have had an alternative to using his body to try to shield students from Cruz’s bullets.

Cruz’s deadly assault didn’t come out of the blue. There were plenty of warning signs that were ignored by the FBI, the Broward County Sheriff, and school officials who made a deal with law enforcement to go easy on student criminals so the school could qualify for more federal aid. “This widespread dereliction of duty shows why a law enforcement approach just won’t work,” Blumenthal argued. “Other countries that have disarmed the civilian population don’t have these kind of problems. We don’t see massacres like this in China or Russia. America needs to get past its obsession with our Second Amendment right to bear arms as a so-called bulwark against the theoretical oppression of a tyrannical government. Worse things can happen, as the Parkland incident has so clearly shown.”

Ironically, right now, a crew of several Palm Beach County, Florida, police officers are guarding Peterson’s home around the clock. This gives him more protection than law enforcement gave to the thousands of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

As horrific as mass shootings in the United States have been, the toll in victims has been far short of the millions that have died at the hands of governments, like China and Russia, that have disarmed their populations. And on a per capita basis, the United States has fewer mass shoot victims than many European countries that have stricter gun control laws than we do—including Norway, France, Switzerland, Finland, Belgium and the Czech Republic.

In related news, despite unrelenting media and political propaganda aimed at demonizing guns, a recent poll conducted jointly by ABC and theWashington Post caused consternation by revealing that 57% of respondents felt that more stringent measures to deal with mental illness would be the more effective way of reducing mass shootings (President Trump’s suggestion) than the 28% who felt that stronger gun-control laws are the way to go (Democratic Party’s position). MSNBC host Katy Tur called the poll results “disappointing considering all the effort we’ve been putting into trying to shape the narrative on this issue.”

Chicago ID Card Will Allow Illegals to Vote

In a bid to “harness the political potential of adding hundreds of thousands of new Democratic voters,” the City of Chicago has authorized government-issued photo ID cards for all residents, including “undocumented persons” in the country illegally.

State Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich said “the determination of who will be allowed to vote will be in the hands of local election authorities. There is no state law requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. All you have to do is check a box on the voter registration form that says ‘yes, I am a citizen.’”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the card “an ingenious counter to the Trump Administration’s efforts to deny voting rights to immigrants, the homeless and those recently released from prison. There are 109 different local election authorities in Illinois. There’s no way his federal goons can keep track of what all of these dispersed centers of election registrations are doing. Between this ID card and our sanctuary city policy I’m hopeful that we will make it impossible for any Republican to win any elective office in the state.”

Abbas Threatens Terror Attacks if US Cuts Aid

President Trump’s decision to reduce US aid to Palestine has so angered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that he has vowed “to send wave after wave of terrorists to bomb, shoot, stab, or run over Americans wherever we can find them—even in the United States. You think things have been bad with the occasional attack on the Jews occupying our land, well they are about to get a whole lot worse. President Obama gave us money with the understanding that we would confine our attacks to the Jews. Trump breaks this deal at his own risk.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) agreed with Abbas and labeled Trump’s cut in aid to the PLO “a rash move. President Obama’s payments to the PLO were an important plank in his policy of transformation for America and the world. You can’t just remove that plank and not expect there to be consequences.”

In a later, off-the-record conversation with Democratic colleagues, Pelosi expressed regret for “not thinking of a similar ploy to deter the recent GOP tax cuts that have severely hurt California taxpayers. The cap in the deductibility for state and local taxes in the GOP legislation has hurt upper income Californians who are our Party’s biggest donors. If we could’ve thought of a way to unleash MS-13 gang members on the rest of the country we might have swayed enough GOP moderates to kill the Trump bill.”

In related news, Pelosi suggested that a more cost-effective method for discouraging illegal border crossings into the United States “would be to mow the grass. Without the concealment provided by tall grass those trying to sneak into America would be easily seen. The embarrassment alone would, in my opinion, be a significant deterrent. I mean, who wants to be seen while committing a crime? I think it would be cheaper and more effective. With Trump’s wall idea, border crossers could use the wall to hide and climb over it after border guards left the area.”

Islam’s Priorities Clarified

In a lecture on religious doctrine, prominent Australian Muslim preacher Mohamed Hoblos told a gathering of the faithful that “a person who murders someone or rapes a child, but prays daily as prescribed in the Quran is better in the eyes of Allah than the one who doesn’t commit any of these sins, but doesn’t pray, Any person who misses one prayer without a good excuse is worse than a murderer, worse than a rapist in the eyes of Allah.”

Hoblos explained that “Allah does not want the faithful to sin. Not murdering or raping people is to be preferred, but it is better to sin and pray than it is to not sin and not pray. Daily acknowledgment of the greatness of God is more important to your salvation than good behavior toward others, even if they are fellow Muslims. Of course, the best way to achieve salvation while still sating your desire to hurt people is to select your victims from among those who are unbelievers. That way you can fulfill your obligation to wage jihad against the unbelievers and earn your reward in paradise.”

Meanwhile, Muslims in India are enraged by Pampers Baby Dry Pants. The disposable underwear has a cartoon drawing of the face of a kitten on it that local Islamic loons imagine spells out the name: Mohammed. Thus far, a few of the pull-up underpants have been publicly burned in protest. Fanatics are calling for a boycott of the product, demanding a change in design and an apology for “this act of sheer desecration” and warning of dire consequences if their demands are not met with appropriate alacrity.

Venezuelans Lead World in Weight Loss

Last year the inhabitants of Venezuela led the world in weight loss with an average decline in weight of 24 lbs. per person. President Nicolas Maduro lamented that “the outcome would’ve been even better if more of the largest losers had been able to survive. Still, we are showing the gringos how to fight climate change.”

Former US President Barack Obama hailed the country’s mass starvation method of weight loss as “a remarkable shrinkage of Venezuela’s carbon footprint. The sacrifices made by their people to reduce global warming have been truly heroic. One of my biggest regrets is that I was unable to lead the United States to make a similar effort. Our prosperity feeds our gluttony at the expense of the planet’s environment. More than 70% of Americans are obese. It’s a sad contrast to the nobility shown by Venezuela’s amazingly lean people and its government’s bold leadership.”

While many might consider the price the people of that country have paid for this environmental achievement—hunger, poverty, and death—excessive, Maduro boasts that “socialism has cured a problem that capitalistic societies have created. Rather than rape the land with our plows to grow food to make us fat, our people have eaten garbage the bloated Yankee pigs would consider spoiled, rotten, or stale and thrown away. This is why, like cockroaches, progressive societies will prevail when the veneer of civilization is torn down and cast aside.”

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect.

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.

This week, Nikolas Cruz killed 17 and wounded another 13 in an assault on the students and faculty of Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida. By law, the school is a designated “gun free zone.” This ensured that Cruz would be able to fire at will until off-site police arrived, which they did within five minutes of being called. By that time the 19-year-old Cruz had ditched his weapon and blended in with the fleeing students.

Cruz’s heinous plan was months in the making. Back on September 5, 2017 Cruz posted a YouTube boast “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” The FBI was alerted to this threat by Ben Bennight, but professed themselves unable to identify the poster despite the fact that he used his real name.

Meanwhile, Parkland police acknowledged that officers had made 39 visits to Cruz’s residence over the last several years responding to 9-1-1 calls complaining of a “mentally ill person.” Marjory Stoneman High School authorities had also previously expelled Cruz for violent behavior and threats. Nevertheless, Cruz was able to pass an FBI background check and purchase the AR-15 rifle he used in his killing spree.

On January 5 of this year, a person close to Cruz alerted the FBI and provided information about his gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, disturbing social media posts, and potential to carry out a school shooting. The FBI failed to follow up on this tip.

Fresh from his testimony to congress in which he hailed the FBI as “the finest group of professionals and public servants I could hope to work with,” Director Christopher Wray admitted that “I am at a loss to explain this breakdown in the Agency’s protocols. It is our responsibility to act quickly and properly when members of the public call our tip line with information regarding a threat of personal harm.” Wray promised to “work tirelessly to get to the bottom of this mystifying dereliction of duty.”

A possible explanation was offered by FBI Deputy Director Rod Rosenstein’s announcement that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had just indicted 13 Russians for meddling in the 2016 election. The meddling is reported to have included using false names while making FaceBook posts denigrating the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and the staging of simultaneous pro and anti Trump post-election rallies.

“While we certainly understand and sympathize with parents whose children were allegedly murdered by Mr. Cruz, the FBI doesn’t have unlimited resources.,” Rosenstein said. “We have to prioritize and deploy our manpower to deal with what the Agency determines is the greater threat. For more than a year we have been investigating Russian interference in our elections. That more than a dozen Russian-backed Internet trolls dared to make snide comments about a presidential candidate was, in our estimate a more dire peril than the possibility that a deranged lunatic might massacre a few dozen relatively unimportant teenagers.”

Whether the indictment of these Russians will accomplish anything seems dubious. The individuals are currently outside the US jurisdiction and are unlikely to be surrendered to US authorities to be prosecuted for posts that would appear to be covered by the Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. Besides, the normal punishment for obnoxious behavior by a foreigner is to expel him from the country.

However, Rosenstein insists that “it’s the principle that matters. The Russian government’s refusal to allow us to extradite these men will be an indelible and embarrassing stain on their reputation. Even if they do permit extradition, the ultimate formal expulsion of these men will shame them before the whole world.”

“The bigger issue is how we will prevent this type of foreign interference in the future,” Rosenstein contended. “We have already been working informally with FaceBook, Google, and Twitter to try to get them to screen out unwarranted political content. While this is an encouraging beginning, I think we need to move toward some sort of government procedure that could review all political comments before they are posted to the web. That way we could head off destructive and antisocial remarks before they can damage our democratic processes.”

In related news, Attorney General Jeff Sessions absolved himself of any culpability for the FBI’s failure to avert the Florida shooting, asking people to “remember that I’ve recused myself from anything involving law enforcement” and sought to reassure Americans by saying that “I’ve asked Deputy Rosenstein to handle any further actions related to the FBI’s neglect to follow protocols of its various and sundry responsibilities, whatever those might be.”

Oprah Says She Won’t Run for President

Daytime TV personality Oprah Winfrey’s assertion that she will not run for president in 2020 “because if God actually wanted me to run, wouldn’t God kinda tell me? And I haven’t heard that. I had a lot of wealthy men calling, telling me that they would run my campaign and raise $1 billion for me, but it’s just not in my spirit.”

Joy Behar, a panelist on ABC’s The View talk show, called Oprah’s remarks “insane. It’s the kind of thing we’d expect to come out of Vice-President Pence’s mouth. What can she be thinking putting the imaginary words of some spook in the sky ahead of a billion dollar campaign war chest? I mean, if she were the president she could give everyone a brand new car. To my mind, that would be a winning issue and a great economic program. To take herself out of the running like she has is just plain nuts.”

In Congress, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif) charged God with racism. “Why is God telling the greatest black woman in America not to run for president? He let a white woman run.” Waters vowed to introduce legislation to remove the phrase “in God we trust” from US currency. “How can any right-thinking American trust God after the horrible message he gave Oprah?”

Court Says Muslim Travel Ban Unconstitutional

This week the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 9-4 to overturn President Trump’s anti-terrorist travel ban from eight countries on the grounds that “it violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom. The President’s assumption that the Muslim call for jihad from its adherents empowers him to block the immigration of practitioners of this religion into this country is mistaken. The protection of the First Amendment is absolute. It allows no exception for religious practices that entail violence. To single out one religion merely because it commands the coercion or murder of unbelievers is, therefore, unconstitutional.”

Chief Judge Roger Gregory admitted that “the potential dangers of an attack from within by persons motivated by pure religious tenets was unforeseen by the Framers. Ironically, the Constitution explicitly bars the government from taking actions against the free exercise of any religion in this country. Thus far, the defenders of Islam have focused only on the admission of Muslims from abroad. It could be argued, though, that since jihad is a genuine component of their religion, the government is even barred from taking any measures to interfere with the efforts of any Muslims within US borders to convert or eliminate those who resist its entreaties to surrender to Allah.”

“It could also be argued that since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalized the Satanic rite of human sacrifice it would be discriminatory to deny the roughly equivalent Islamic rite to slay infidels,” Gregory added. “After all, what’s good for the goose ought to be good for the gander.”

Judge Paul Niemeyer, one of the four dissenting votes, called the majority’s decision “a serious mistake in both law and common sense. In essence, what they are saying is that if a man wants to kill someone for religious reasons the US government is constitutionally barred from intervening to prevent it. There is no way the Framers intended this result when they wrote the First Amendment. Freedom of religion does not entail allowing one person to harm another no matter what a religion’s particular dogma or rituals might prescribe. Fortunately, the Second Amendment still allows the would-be victim of the religious zealot to defend himself.”

In related news, Swedish police officer Peter Springare is in deep trouble for objecting to “the cultural phenomenon of gang rapes carried out by Muslim immigrants.” Secretary General of Sweden’s Law Society Anne Ramberg characterized Springare’s remarks as “almost racist” and “not up to the standards we expect of our civil servants. As I understand it, these behaviors by Muslim men are considered justified in their religion if women appear in public unaccompanied by a male relative. For us to object is cruel and insensitive.”

Dems & Pubs Battle Over Food Stamps

In a proposal dubbed “America’s Harvest Box,” President Trump’s new budget calls for replacing half of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) vouchers with actual food for 80% of the program’s recipients. The “box” would contain allotments of shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit and vegetables.

Democrats were quick to attack the plan. Michigan Sen Debbie Stabenow, the ranking Democrat on the agriculture committee, labeled it “not a serious proposal.” Rep Jim McGovern (D-Mass) called it “a cruel joke. It unfairly limits the choices of those dependent on the government for their living. We’ve been moving toward expanding the options for those in the program. The vouchers can and often are exchanged for cash that could be used to buy cigarettes or beer. The distribution of food would make these types of exchanges more difficult. It would be a step backward. Why should government dependents have fewer choices than the rest of society?”

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue defended the plan as a “cost saving measure. The vouchers must pay for food at retail prices. We can buy the food at bulk rates and get more bang for the taxpayers’ money.”

Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas) was cool to the idea. “I’m drafting a bill that will save billions in the SNAP program by tightening eligibility and requiring able-bodied recipients to work. Statistics show that fewer than half of the able-bodied in the program have jobs. This unforced dependency is both an unnecessary burden on taxpayers and ensnares millions in a perpetual cycle of idleness and dependency.”

McGovern also denounced Conaway’s idea that recipients ought to have to work if they are able. “It’s petty for a country as rich as America to force people to work if they want to eat,” he argued. “We abolished slavery more than 150 years ago. I find it reprehensible that Republicans are trying to sneak it back in as a budget economy measure.”

In related news, former New York City police officer Jose Vega is suing the Police Department for making him obese. Vega is currently living on a $4,000 per month disability pension. “My goal was to become a first-grade detective and homicide detective,’’ he said. “But they made me walk a beat where many of the vendors and restaurants expressed their support of law enforcement by giving me free food. I ballooned from 180 to 395 lbs. and couldn’t work anymore.” Vega is demanding that he be “taken back on the force part time for $6,200 a month. I could be kind of a ‘Nero Wolfe’ and solve crimes without ever having to leave my apartment.”

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect.

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.

LinkWhat to do with the mess that is ESPN SportsCenter, or “WokeCenter” as Clay Travis calls it? That became a $64,000 question today as several people weighed in on the program-in-crisis on the Worldwide Leader in (Liberal) Sports.

Travis, of the Outkick The Coverage blog and a frequent critic of ESPN, said the SportsCenter 6 experiment of the past year has been a huge failure. Michael Smith (in photograph), the surviving member of SC6 since the departure of Trump-hater Jemele Hill, is spewing bitter words about the state of the show. Former SC host Steve Levy says it’s now unrecognizable from what it used to be, and ESPN Public Editor Jim Brady says there’s still juice left in Sports Center, though an industry expert says he’s not so sure of that.

Travis’s lead story today centers on Smith confirming that Hill did not leave SC6 of her own accord when she recently transitioned over to ESPN’s black culture blog, The Undefeated. Last year, ESPN gave the liberal duo millions of dollars to re-shape SportsCenter into a let’s-not-stick-to-sports package. It fell flat, and no one was watching. To make matters worse, last fall Hill drew a strong White House rebuke for calling President Trump and his supporters “white supremacists.” Later she got suspended for another rant on social media. Since she became toxic and the show was doing a Tom Petty free-falling rendition, why didn’t ESPN just dump her?

Travis said ESPN was afraid of Al Sharpton types playing the race card, so it allowed her to explore other career options in hopes of shedding her hefty salary. Not even MSNBC and or CNN would take her, so ESPN elected to drive Hill off the show by, as Travis describes it, “stripping all WokeCenter out of the broadcast. Eventually they stifled the show enough that Jemele Hill asked off, leaving Michael Smith alone by himself. (The hope is that eventually Smith will ask off as well.)”

Smith has a volatile temper and he came unglued, indicating Hill didn’t leave on her own and complaining that they weren’t allowed to continue doing commentary:

“There was a time we weren’t even talking to each other (on the show) anymore. Like no more Michael and Jemele, not less, not here and there. No more Michael and Jemele talking. No more of their commentary. It’s just strictly live shots and analysts. That’s what pissed me off so much. I was like, wait a second, you all acknowledge that one of the strengths we have going for us as a show is Michael and Jemele’s chemistry, but Michael and Jemele don’t f——- talk to each other? How does that make sense?

“Instead of saying ‘no, this is the vision for this show, this is what we’re doing. This show is about Michael and Jemele and their opinions and their chemistry, and they’re going to do ‘SportsCenter’ their way.’ Instead of sticking to that vision, we immediately tried to merge two things. It was very frustrating …They got what they wanted, which was Michael and Jemele being muted. And that frustrated the s— out of us.”

Travis says viewers are the winner in all of this because ESPN finally looked at the ratings and realized the public wanted SportsCenter, not WokeCenter.

ESPN’s Brady said SportsCenter has been “the sun in ESPN’s solar system” ever since day one in 1979. “SportsCenter is facing challenges and facing a future that seems less certain than ever.” Foolishly trying to fix what isn’t broken, the ESPN “sun” began to experience a nova when it changed the focus from reporting to personalities like Hill and Smith. Brady and ESPN contend that Hill left on her own because “recent changes to SportsCenter made it less of a fit for her.” Hill’s talent and passion “remain a big net plus for ESPN,” said Brady.

Brady indicated ESPN is too stubborn, though, to pull back from a personality-driven SC focus. He said turning back to pure highlights is not an option, but ESPN is still “wrestling with a lot as it charts SportsCenter’s future course.” Without an obvious road to success.

Steve Levy, the longest-serving anchor of SC, said it all: “The show could not have changed any more. It’s almost unrecognizable from the show I started on in 1993.” “I’m not sure it’s really fixable,” BTIG cable analyst Rich Greenfield told Yahoo Finance. “People don’t watch sports news on TV when highlights are on your phone 24/7, and when the NFL has highlights on Twitter and Snapchat. People don’t need SportsCenter like they used to.”

Brady still refuses to count SportsCenter out. “There’s still a lot of juice left in the brand,” he writes. Well, there’s a thing called invisible ink and maybe there’s “invisible juice,” too. WokeCenter may have put too many viewers to sleep to ever prosper again.

With evidence piling up that the FBI abused the FISA court process to spy on the Trump campaign, comparison to the 1972 Nixon campaign’s effort to spy on his Democratic opponent’s campaign have been suggested. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) has labeled the comparison as “absurd.”

“Look, the Watergate operation was conducted by burglars,” Schiff pointed out. “Those guys had no prior authorization to spy on Sen. McGovern’s campaign. The FBI had the FISA court’s permission to spy on the Trump campaign. For Republicans to try to compare the two events is totally unwarranted.”

Schiff similarly disposed of allegations that the FBI lied to the FISA court, saying that “federal law enforcement personnel have the right and the obligation to lie if that is what is deemed necessary to protect national security or to apprehend criminal suspects. As the unredacted FBI texts and emails reveal, agents working for the FBI honestly believed that the election of Donald Trump posed a dire threat to US national security. Consequently, the agency’s actions aimed at thwarting that outcome cannot be used as evidence against them even if they lied to the court and violated the civil rights of any individual.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called Schiff’s rationale “disturbing. Its acceptance of the idea that federal police can use deception to obtain court permission to spy on Americans involved in a political campaign acquiesces in the same type of abuse we saw in the Watergate case, but on a much broader scale. For Mr. Schiff to try to excuse it because it was carried out under cover of law essentially endorses official interference in the democratic process of voting. It subverts government of the people and replaces it with the kind of police-state tactics that characterized Communist rule under the former Soviet Union.”

In related news, Schiff defended his attempt to obtain naked photos of Trump offered to him by two Russian comedians posing as a high-ranking officials in the Ukrainian government, calling his actions “the epitome of patriotism. Given the obvious shortcomings of Trump’s abilities to perform his duties as president it was my sacred duty to obtain whatever information I could to try to oust him from office. Vain as he is, I thought the threat of having his less than prodigious endowment in the genital area exposed might persuade him to resign. I mean, I doubt Trump could measure up to Weiner’s wiener. And it didn’t bother me one bit that the photos would’ve been obtained by the invasion of his privacy. In war all is fair.”

Bush Convinced Russians Tried to Rig Election for Trump

Despite the emergence of a pattern of improper actions by the FBI, the Obama Administration, and the Hillary Clinton campaign to spy on and smear Donald Trump, former President George W. Bush offered his opinion that “there is clear evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election to aid Trump.”

“For eight years I was the Decider-in-Chief of the United States of America,” Bush boasted. “I have insights that few other human beings have when it comes to serious matters like statecraft, governance and strategery. I can easily pierce the veil of facts and get to the underlying true reality.”

“For me, the most important clue was revealed in the debates,” Bush continued. “While few may have noticed, Trump announced that he would like to have better relations with Russia. In contrast Hillary said she would authorize our Air Force to shoot down Russian jets in Syria. Now ask yourself, who do you think Russia would rather have as the American president: a guy who wants better relations or a woman who’s ready to kill their guys? Once you look at everything from this perspective it should be obvious that the only person the Russians would have wanted to help was Trump.”

“Take the Uranium One scandal for example,” Bush said. “By exploiting the Clintons’ well-known greed, the Russians were able to tar Hillary with a clumsily concealed bribery scheme that would’ve destroyed her candidacy were it not for the heroic efforts of the media to bury this story under mounds of anti-Trump rhetoric.”

“Unfortunately, the Russians are wily adversaries,” Bush observed. “So they concocted a backup plan to dupe Hillary into buying a contrived dossier of dirt on Trump that diverted her from campaigning on her winning issues of higher taxes, bigger spending, more regulation and open borders. So confident was she of winning by attacking his character with this dossier and the ‘pussy grabbing’ tape that she cut back her campaign appearances to rest up for her inauguration. As we all saw to our great consternation, the Russian scheme worked like a charm and Trump eked out a victory in the Electoral College even though he lost the popular vote.”

“Despite Russian success in overturning the election of the most qualified nominee of either Party in this nation’s long history, I remain optimistic that all is not lost,” the former President said. “Hopefully, patriots like Comey and Mueller will yet find a way to oust Trump and place a more qualified person on the throne. I think a good compromise candidate to install as president would be my brother Jeb. He’s got the breeding and the experience needed to govern this great country.”

In related news, Hillary Clinton now claims she was only following Peter Strzok’s advice when she used Bleachbit to erase her subpoenaed emails. “Considering the vast expertise of the FBI and my own relative ignorance about computer security who can blame me for trusting their judgment?” she asked. “It also made sense since murder suspects on Law and Order are always using bleach to destroy evidence. At the very least, I think I should have immunity for merely following a suggestion given by an officer in the nation’s premier law-enforcement agency.”

California Dreaming

The formerly bankrupt City of Stockton, California is planning to implement a basic universal income scheme that would pay out $6,000 per year to select low-income households. The scheme is the brainchild of Mayor Michael Tubbs who hopes “to demonstrate that providing people with money they may spend in anyway they choose will inspire imitation across the land. The first phase of the plan is to choose 100 families that will receive $500 per month for 18 months and see what happens.”

Renowned economist Thomas Sowell criticized Tubbs’ idea contending that “if you give people something for nothing it will tend to make them more complacent in their poverty rather than inspiring them to better themselves, as the Mayor naively hopes. His ‘experiment’ has been carried out on a much larger scale by socialist redistribution schemes in other countries and in America’s lengthy ‘war on poverty’ that has ensnared generations of poor people in a never ending cycle of dependency over the last 50 plus years.”

Tubbs dismissed this criticism as “an outdated racist way of thinking. Those other programs were all designed and operated by white men and imposed on black folks. My plan is conceived by a black man and will be administered by those this black man chooses to run it. This will give us a pure test of the concept free from the racist bias that has ruined all previous experiments.”

Urinating Illegal Stabs Man

In Maryland, Salvador Gomez-Lopez, a native of El Salvador in the United States illegally will go on trial for stabbing a man waiting at a bus stop. The attack sprang from the victim’s objection to Gomez urinating in front of fellow bus passengers. Arresting police described Gomez as “drunk and belligerent.”

In the US House of Representatives, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) gave an eight hour speech blaming Trump’s “anti-immigrant policies for this tragedy. The hostility of the President toward immigrants seeking a better life in America is the primary cause for this incident. If Mr. Gomez didn’t have to live in the shadows for fear of deportation he wouldn’t have to urinate in public. Nor would he have to bear the gibes of some wealthy white man demanding that he find a toilet to do his business. His impulse to stab the man tormenting him was a foreseeable outcome of Trump’s refusal to grant amnesty to the 30 million undocumented Americans that have entered this country without his permission.”

“Poor Nancy is losing her grip on reality,” Trump said in a one-minute reply. “Mr. Gomez is precisely the kind of immigrant we don’t need coming into our country. He has no respect for decency. Public restrooms are plentiful in America. He has no respect for human life. Stabbing a person for trying to uphold decency is not justified. The Democrats’ efforts to make America safe for the likes of Mr. Gomez endangers the lives of law-abiding citizens everywhere. He is a sterling example of why we need tighter border enforcement.”

Meanwhile, in another distribution of “crumbs” stemming from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, General Motors announced that 50,000 factory workers will each receive a profit-sharing check in the amount of $11,750. Pelosi still insists that “this money frittered away on relatively wealthy auto workers could have been better spent by the government providing the kind of aid that immigrants like Mr. Gomez so desperately need.”

In related news, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews argued that “Republican attacks on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are ethnic politics. Rep. Pelosi may herself be a rich white woman, but she is also a champion of ethnic minorities, so much so that her little grandson says he wishes he had brown skin so his Grammy would love him more. So, when we think about it in these terms, we can’t escape the conclusion that Republicans are basically covert racists when they argue against her policy positions.”

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect.

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.

The release of the House Intelligence Committee memo summarizing FBI abuses of its surveillance authority sparked differing reactions across the political spectrum. The gist of the Agency’s crime is that top FBI officials knowingly used an unverified dossier created at the behest of the Democratic National Committee to dupe a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge into issuing a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.

President Trump, target and victim of the FBI’s political vendetta, described the FBI’s actions as “worse than Watergate where a handful of Nixon campaign operatives broke into Democratic Party offices to spy on the McGovern campaign. Now we see the Obama Department of Justice used the full weight of the federal government to try to rig the election against me. I think it’s terrible. I think it’s a disgrace.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) insists that “the disgrace is that Trump would allow the House memo to be declassified. The heroic actions of these dedicated FBI law enforcement officers to try to protect the nation from being taken over by an unqualified usurper are now being held up to scorn merely because they manipulated the legal process. Well, there are times when patriots have to put the greater good ahead of adherence to the law. I think Trump is lucky that all they did was try to derail his election and prompt his impeachment. As Sen. Schumer (D-NY) has pointed out, our nation’s intelligence agencies have access to more lethal options for disposing of threats against this country.”

Former FBI Director James Comey derided the release of the memo for “exposing matters that were better left classified. By its nature, intelligence work entails doing things that an unsophisticated general public might consider dishonest or even criminal. But dire threats call for dire deeds. Did the nation berate FDR for authorizing the firebombing of German and Japanese civilians? No. They accepted these harsh measures as the price of freedom. In this context, the FBI’s tactic of merely sabotaging the Trump campaign and supporting the resistance when that effort failed strikes me as both justified and more merciful than other steps they could have taken.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called the memo’s release “a stain on our reputation. By unveiling the disreputable behavior of the FBI for all the world to see we are conveying the impression that America has its own secret police who abuse their authority for political reasons. Comparisons to the Soviet KGB or Nazi Gestapo are now inevitable. The damage this does to our nation is incalculable. It would have been better if the errant FBI men had conveniently perished in a train wreck that could’ve been arranged by trained assassins from one of our other intelligence agencies.”

CNN political analyst Brian Karem characterized the release of the memo as “the death knell for our democracy. Congressional intrusion into the independence of the FBI tears our Constitution to shreds. That a body with an overt political role could divulge information that an intelligence agency wants to conceal overturns decades of agreement on both sides of the aisle. It’s like the analogy made by former CIA Director Leon Panetta, ‘who should we trust when it comes down to what is best for the country—James Bond or the gas bags in Parliament, or in our case, Congress.’”

The primary author of the memo—House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif)–says “the reactions I’m seeing from both sides reaffirms my belief that releasing the memo was the right thing to do. The notion that some of my Democratic Party colleagues have that the FBI ought to be independent from congressional scrutiny, that we ought to blindly trust our intelligence agencies is about as far away as we could get from the type of open, democratic, and free government that our Constitution intended. I hope it will inspire the types of reform that can guard against future abuses of power by those whose jobs are to defend the law and the safety of the citizens of the United States.”

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) warned President Trump that “firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, or any other high-ranking member of the Department of Justice on the pretext that their involvement in the improper use of the FISA system renders them unworthy of being trusted would be clear grounds for impeachment. Every Democrat and quite a few Republicans in the House and Senate implicitly trust these men despite any missteps they may have inadvertently taken in the pursuit of justice and American security interests.”

In related news, the latest batch of text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page revealed the two discussing the best way to illegally copy and transmit classified material without being caught. A text from Strzok to Page explicitly states that “If I want to copy/take classified, I’m sure as hell not going to do it on this phone.” While admitting that this looks bad, Attorney General Jeff Sessions took the occasion to point out that “not everyone who works at the FBI or Department of Justice is crooked. We just have to hope that the good apples outnumber and outwork the bad ones.”

Fidel Castro Jr. Commits Suicide, Trump Blamed

This week, the 68-year-old son of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro committed suicide. Though communism enabled his famous father to amass a billion dollar personal fortune, “Fidelito” was said by friends to have become depressed upon realizing “that Yankee bastard is right. My country is a sh*thole.”

Long-time compadre, Vacio Cabeza professed himself “mystified. He wanted for nothing. We lived like kings. Admittedly, life is kind of tough for the average Cuban, but what does that matter to men like us? Why should we care what Trump said about Cuba?”

Reminded that Trump did not explicitly include Cuba in his complaint about “bringing in so many people from these sh*thole countries,” Cabeza retorted, “we aren’t stupid. Look around you. Why do you think so many Cubans try to paddle their way to America? With Fidelito gone I might have to try the same thing. Who will pick up the tab for me now?”

Fidelito’s uncle and current Cuban dictator Raul Castro is reported to have set up “suicide hotlines to assist fellow comrades who may wish to follow my nephew’s example. Surely, there are others who have even greater reasons for wanting out than our beloved Fidelito.”

Raul lamented that “I partially blame myself for not suppressing Trump’s scurrilous remarks, but then what could I do. It’s not like the old days when we could just execute people who spread capitalist propaganda. There are just too many of them these days. The imperialists have infiltrated fantastical images of the prosperity that exists outside our island paradise and fomented disloyalty everywhere.”

Retiring Planned Parenthood CEO Gives Farewell Speech

Retiring Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards urged abortion supporters to “fight back against the moralists who threaten women’s freedom.” She pointed to “a few bright spots we’ve seen in recent weeks that should encourage our faith in the ultimate victory of our cause.”

“First there was the virtually unanimous vote by House Democrats against requiring abortionists to render medical aid to infants who survive the procedure,” Richards recounted. “This nonsensical Republican attempt to impose their own notion of what they call ‘common human decency’ would completely negate the purpose of the procedure. The mother came for the express purpose of terminating her unwanted pregnancy. To require the doctor to offer life-saving aid after he has botched the termination effort is cruel and demented.”

“Next, there was the successful Democrat filibuster against the Senate Republicans’ attempt to prevent abortions that cause pain for the fetus,” Richards continued. “Seeing the Democrats high-fiving each other after killing the bill was exhilarating. For the GOP to try to use the few moments of pain experienced by the fetus as it is ripped apart inside the mother’s womb as a ploy to foist a lifetime of obligation on the parents is a moral atrocity.”

“Not content with their efforts to nullify a woman’s right to an abortion, the GOP is now touting legislation that would greatly inconvenience women by allowing the doctor they prefer to perform the procedure to decline on the grounds that it violates his conscience,” Richards complained. “Their bill would overturn President Obama’s decree that doctors must abide by the consciences of their patients and have no right to insert their own moral objections into the transaction. Permitting individuals to each make their own moral judgments is the road to anarchy. If the government is to fully empower women to choose whether to be mothers it must enforce compliance upon those the government has licensed to practice medicine and compel doctors to perform requested abortions.”

MSNBC Lunatics Pan Trump’s State-of-the-Union Speech

Despite polls showing that 70% of those who saw or heard President Trump’s State-of-the-Union speech approved of it, the media talking heads at MSNBC roundly panned it.
Joy Reid, host of the weekend “news” show A.M. Joy, contended that “his praise of church, family, and the National Anthem are clearly outside the mainstream of the values shared by most of the country. We’ve moved on from these outdated and obsolete ideas. And his total failure to reach out to the LGBTQ community puts him at odds with the progressive aspirations laid out for America by President Obama.”

Stene Schmidt, the network’s “Republican” strategist, backed his MSNBC colleague, saying that “I found Trump to be divisive and delusional. What about the people who disparage religion, abort their families, and despise the Anthem’s encouragement of patriotism? What does Trump have to offer them? How can he unite the country without fighting for their values like President Obama did?”

Host of MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews wondered “what’s the deal with all of Trump’s references to MS-13? Even if we concede that this is a vicious gang of murdering thugs there’s no evidence they colluded with the Russians to interfere with our elections. We shouldn’t let Trump get away with using them as a distraction from his collusion with the Russians to undermine the ascension of Hillary Clinton to the presidency.”
Donny Deutsch, a regular guest on the MSNBC talk show Morning Joe, declared that “the speech proves Trump is a dictator. I urge people to take to the streets and overthrow this monster before we lose all of our freedom.”

In related news, National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell defended his organization’s decision to reject the American Veterans (AMVETS) ad asking Super Bowl attendees to “please stand for the National Anthem.” “We have invested a lot of energy empowering those who have grievances to sit or kneel for the Anthem,” Goodell said. “We are not about to let a gang of aged jar heads abuse our forum by making an insensitive political statement that undermines the progress we’ve made.”

Pelosi Explains “Crumbs” Statement

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) defended her dismissal of the $1,000s in bonuses and tax cuts flowing to the middle class from the recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as “crumbs.”

Using herself as an example, Pelosi observed that “the pittances being received by members of the working classes are dwarfed by the hit I’m taking. By limiting the deductability of mortgage interest to only $10,000 on only an owner-occupied home, those of us who own multiple houses worth millions of dollars are losing far more than these commoners are gaining. My tax accountant tells me I’ll have to pay an additional $100,000 or more in income taxes because of this. I’m maybe a hundred times worse off than the average Joe. So it is small comfort to me that ordinary folks are benefiting by a few thousand apiece because of this dumb tax cut.”

The House Minority Leader is one of the richest members of Congress with a net worth estimated at over $190 million.

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect.

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.

The Trump proposal to extend a path to citizenship for 1.8 illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children was assailed by key Democrats this week.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill) called the proposal “far short of anything I could agree to. What about the other 30 million undocumented persons living in this country? Where’s the path to citizenship for them. On top of this, Trump’s ‘deal’ would require us to agree to fund beefed up border security, limit chain migration, and end the visa lottery—blocking millions of future migrants from enjoying the same opportunity that he would selfishly restrict to a relatively few ‘worthy’ dreamers.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) denounced Trump’s proposal as “a cynical ploy to place the interests of current citizens ahead of those hoping to become future citizens. He’s asking Democrats to accept a mere 1.8 million new voters as the price of us consenting to block 30 million or more new voters. This is far short of ‘half-a-loaf.’ Polls show that the majority of Americans are with us on this issue. We will use Trump’s insulting proposal to win the 2018 elections, take back congress and advance the progress pf our efforts to oust the usurper.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) labeled Trump’s proposal “heartless. His plan is to give preference to the competent and productive among the dreamers when it is the incompetent and unproductive who are most in need of the benefits we can afford to provide. The welfare programs south of the border are pitifully inadequate. Trump would target those who seek the better life they can live under the generosity of our government for deportation. This is unconstitutionally both cruel and unusual punishment for the tens of millions who have endured the severe hardships of trekking across the border.”

In related news, beginning April 1, illegal immigrants who have been granted driver’s licenses in California will be allowed to vote. “It’s the next logical step in our state’s battle against the Trump Administration’s attempt to close our borders to immigrants,” said Gov. Jerry Brown. “The votes of these immigrants will ensure that the state will send Democrats to Congress to oppose Trump in 2018 and ensure that our electoral votes will go to Democrats from this point on.”

House Intel Memo Sparks Reaction

A confidential memo written by Republicans from the House Intelligence Committee has sparked different reactions from Democrats and Republicans. Republicans who have read the memo describe its contents as “shocking.”

“The facts contained in this memo are jaw-dropping and demand full transparency,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla). “The widespread illegal surveillance of America citizens by the nation’s intelligence community for what appear to be purely political motives is not the kind of behavior one expects in a free society. We need to release the memo so the American people have information they need to decide how they want their government to be run.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va) acknowledged that he has not read the memo, but described it as “sloppy, careless and has no grounding in fact. How do I know this? Well, for one, it was written by Republicans. For two, it alleges that members of the FBI would misuse their authority in a biased way to favor one Party over another.”

Unfortunately for Democrats, contents of some of the 50,000 text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page discuss a plan to “go easy” on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton because, as Page pointed out “she might be our next president. If we get on her bad side it could wreck our careers.”

Strzok replied that he “agreed” and said he contacted his FBI superior Bill Priestap, “who also agrees with our perception.” Strzok later revised then FBI Director James Comey’s draft letter on the Clinton “matter” to change the description of her handling of classified emails from the legally culpable “gross negligence” to the vaguer, but safer “extremely careless.” All of this took place months before 17 witnesses and Clinton herself were even interviewed.

Warner professed himself “unmoved by these text exchanges. Considering that everyone was sure that Hillary would be the next president, it’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to rub her the wrong way. Putting their ‘thumbs on the scale,’ so to speak, would be a natural survival reflex in those circumstances.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) disagreed with his senate colleague’s “casual attitude toward this serious breach of ethics by those high up in this country’s foremost law enforcement agency. Justice requires the unbiased consideration of evidence. The decision to grant leniency to someone on the premise that the person is powerful is corrupt and conducive to tyranny. It cannot be allowed if we are to remain a free country.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, adamantly opposes letting the general public see the memo because “they don’t have the necessary knowledge or experience to adequately understand the seemingly inappropriate steps the intelligence community must take to defend the country from enemies both foreign and domestic. It is naive to think that a federal agent should remain unbiased when the very fate of the nation may require that ‘dirty deeds’ be done to save it.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), ranking member on the House Committee on the Judiciary, demanded that “the FBI be allowed to review the memo and correct any inaccuracies or take whatever other action it deems necessary to protect itself before it is released. Let’s not forget that the FBI has been protecting this country since the Dillinger days. We shouldn’t allow the squeamishness of a few Republicans about the FBI’s methods to undermine public confidence in this great law enforcement agency.”

In related news, a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court ruling found that 85% of the National Security Administration’s (NSA) searches of individual American citizens during the Obama Administration violated the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches. In response, the NSA has deleted “honesty” and “openness” from its “core values” statement on its web page.

Three States to Sue over New Tax Law

New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that his state, New Jersey and Connecticut will be suing the federal government because “the new tax law impedes our ability to extract the maximum amount of revenue from the taxpayers.” The impediment comes from the clause in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that limits the deductibility of state and local taxes to a mere $10,000 per taxpayer per year.

The three states rank at the top of the list for heaviest tax burden as a percent of income with New York at 12.7%, Connecticut at 12.6% and New Jersey at 12.2%. The states also rank high in terms of household median income. But hey, isn’t having the rich pay more in taxes the constant refrain of Democratic politicians whenever the issue is brought up?

Cuomo maintains that “the state tax burden had been partially offset by the old federal tax code that allowed for lower tax states to pay a larger share of the federal tax burden than they otherwise would have. This was fair because these other states have lower state tax burdens, and thus, more money available to send to the federal government. Suddenly changing the rules like Congress and President Trump did was unfair. Our states have grown dependent on being able to shift the burden. Cutting us off is like throwing a family off of food stamps or out of public housing. It’s an intolerable shock to the system.”

Aside from the lawsuit, Cuomo says his state is considering switching from an income tax to a payroll tax. “First, payroll taxes are deductible from federal taxes,” he pointed out. “Second, this will give a break to the high-income donors from Wall Street who donate the majority of the funds state Democrats receive for their election campaigns.”

In related news, California Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon (D-Whittier) has introduced a bill that would subject waiters who give customers a drinking straw without being asked to a fine of up to $1,000 per straw, up to six months in prison, or both. “Plastic straws have been raping our environment for far too long,” Calderone claims. “Waiters are in a position to ameliorate this degradation if they take a more active role in deterring the over use of these weapons of mass desecration. My bill will provide a little more incentive for them to act more aggressively and responsibly.”

Baboons Escape from Paris Zoo

A contingent of 52 baboons is reported to have escaped from the Paris Zoo. The animals are said to be “large and potentially very aggressive.” Authorities are reportedly uncertain about how this situation should be handled.

“On the one hand, there is concern that innocent civilians could be harmed by the animals or our efforts to try to recapture them,” zoo manager Jean Pomfrite worried. “On the other, there is some speculation that the streets would be safer if they are overrun by simians than Sunnis.”

Florence Parly, Minister of the French Armed Forces, is said to be assembling a team to work on the terms of surrender. “As we learned from some of our nation’s previous encounters with hostile forces, it is better to prepare for peace than attempt to fight a battle we are unlikely to win,” Parly maintained. “We’re confident that if things get really bad the United States can be counted on to come to our rescue. While others have often mocked us, I’d like to point out that our cost-effective approach has worked for France for more than 75 years—saving us money that has been better spent on wine, bread and cigarettes.”

NAACP Disputes Trump’sS***hole Description of Haiti

This week, NAACP spokesperson Secreta Stool sought to disprove President Trump’s characterization of Haiti as a “s***hole country.”

“Statistics show otherwise,” Stool asserted. “Only 40% of the population has no access to indoor toilets. This means a majority use flush toilets. Among those unfortunates without indoor plumbing most just relieve themselves in the street, not a hole. So, a more accurate description of Haiti is that it is a cesspit of poverty, disease, and violence.”

Stool said the NAACP has filed a defamation suit against the President. “He has slandered and demoralized the people of this noble nation,” he said. “We are seeking immediate entry into the United States and free accommodation at a Trump hotel for every Haitian fleeing the country. Alternatively, the United States government can pay damages in the amount of $50 trillion.”

CNN Panel Credits Obama for Booming Economy

In the midst of widespread praise of President Trump’s economic policies by world business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a Cable News Network (CNN) panel mostly insisted that the credit for America’s booming economy properly belongs to former President Obama.

CNN International host Christiane Amanpour asserted that “most of the people I talk to on a regular basis agree that President Obama is really the one responsible. It was his policy that ushered in the period of sacrifice and stagnation that made Trump’s moves toward deregulation and tax cuts possible. Let’s not forget that the eight years preceding Trump’s inauguration were the only presidential term in US history where economic growth never reached 3% for a single year. This laid the groundwork for the current surge.”

CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta echoed Amanpour’s remarks, saying that “Trump is merely lucky to be in the right place at the right time. If it hadn’t been for the efforts President Obama made to suppress excessive economic growth the impacts of Trump’s policies would’ve been much more modest. Right now, the corporate fat cats are pleased, but whether any of the benefits trickle down to average folks remains to be seen.”

“That’s right,” CNN’s Early Start host and Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans chimed in. “The top 1% are benefiting immensely. Smaller benefits are being realized by the middle class—a thousand dollar bonus here, a few thousand in tax cuts per household there. Everyone is getting richer, but the gains aren’t equal. People on welfare aren’t getting bonuses or tax cuts. Whether an unequal prosperity is better than the more equally shared sacrifice that President Obama tried to make the new norm is an open question.”

The sole member of the seven-person panel willing to give Trump any credit was Steven Moore, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Project for Economic Growth, at The Heritage Foundation. “There can be no doubt that the Obama Administration’s policies discouraged investment and growth,” Moore observed. “But to claim that these policies deserve the credit for the current surge in business investment and confidence is absurd. It’s like saying that Obama’s previous policy of placing the government’s foot on the neck of the US economy merits more praise than Trump’s moves to dislodge it. That is twisted and insane.”

Meanwhile, the count of companies awarding bonuses to employees because of the Trump tax cuts has now reached 250. Home Depot and Starbucks were the most recent firms to announce that their hourly employees would be sharing in the companies’ good fortune due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

A Satirical Look at Recent News

John Semmens is a retired economist who has written a weekly political satire for The Arizona Conservative since 2005. He says working on his satires is one of the ways he tries to honor the liberties our Founding Fathers tried to protect.

Please do us a favor. If you use material created by The Arizona Conservative, give us credit and DO NOT change the context. Thank you.

Today, we focus our attention on the love and protection each person, born and unborn, deserves regardless of disability, gender, appearance, or ethnicity. Much of the greatest suffering in our Nation’s history — and, indeed, our planet’s history — has been the result of disgracefully misguided attempts to dehumanize whole classes of people based on these immutable characteristics. We cannot let this shameful history repeat itself in new forms, and we must be particularly vigilant to safeguard the most vulnerable lives among us. This is why we observe National Sanctity of Human Life Day: to affirm the truth that all life is sacred, that every person has inherent dignity and worth, and that no class of people should ever be discarded as “non-human.”

Reverence for every human life, one of the values for which our Founding Fathers fought, defines the character of our Nation. Today, it moves us to promote the health of pregnant mothers and their unborn children. It animates our concern for single moms; the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled; and orphan and foster children. It compels us to address the opioid epidemic and to bring aid to those who struggle with mental illness. It gives us the courage to stand up for the weak and the powerless. And it dispels the notion that our worth depends on the extent to which we are planned for or wanted.

Science continues to support and build the case for life. Medical technologies allow us to see images of the unborn children moving their newly formed fingers and toes, yawning, and even smiling. Those images present us with irrefutable evidence that babies are growing within their mothers’ wombs — precious, unique lives, each deserving a future filled with promise and hope. We can also now operate on babies in utero to stave off life-threatening diseases. These important medical advances give us an even greater appreciation for the humanity of the unborn.

Today, citizens throughout our great country are working for the cause of life and fighting for the unborn, driven by love and supported by both science and philosophy. These compassionate Americans are volunteers who assist women through difficult pregnancies, facilitate adoptions, and offer hope to those considering or recovering from abortions. They are medical providers who, often at the risk of their livelihood, conscientiously refuse to participate in abortions. And they are legislators who support health and safety standards, informed consent, parental notification, and bans on late-term abortions, when babies can feel pain. These undeterred warriors, many of whom travel to Washington, D.C., every year for the March for Life, are changing hearts and saving lives through their passionate defense of and loving care for all human lives.

Thankfully, the number of abortions, which has been in steady decline since 1980, is now at a historic low. Though the fight to protect life is not yet over, we commit to advocating each day for all who cannot speak for themselves.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 22, 2018, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call on all Americans to reflect on the value of our lives; to respond to others in keeping with their inherent dignity; to act compassionately to those with disabilities, infirmities, or frailties; to look beyond external factors that might separate us; and to embrace the common humanity that unites us.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this nineteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand eighteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-second.

This week, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Az) compared President Trump to notorious Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in a speech he gave to fellow Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) in the Senate.

Durbin characterized his colleague’s remarks as “moving and insightful. Considering that Trump is clearly a monster of prodigious magnitude, Jeff showed enormous courage speaking truth to power. Why, just the other day Trump used the s*** word to denigrate the governments that are so bad that they turn their citizens into refugees.”

Klobuchar praised Flake’s defense of the media as “a stellar effort in the battle against this country’s worst president. Jeff is among the few Republicans willing to put Party aside for the greater good. We had hoped he could fill the shoes of his state’s mortally ill senior Sen. John McCain, but sadly, the redneck voters in Arizona won’t support his reelection.”

After his speech Flake admitted that “Trump isn’t anything like Stalin. Stalin had his enemies killed or imprisoned. Trump merely insults his with crude tweets and taunts. I evoked Stalin’s name because I knew the media would be eager to cover my remarks if I did. And I was right. My audience’s enthusiastic response assured me that I am on the right track and will get the kind of attention I so desperately need.”

Arizona’s Sen. McCain asserted “I’m proud of Jeff for taking such a bold stand against his own party. It’s a path I have trod often to great media acclaim. When you have no significant legislative achievements to show for a 40-year career, being an outspoken critic of the GOP is a good substitute for garnering notoriety. I can see how my success inspired Jeff. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the advantage of being a war hero to divert Republican voters from his unpopular attacks on a Republican president.”

The media that Flake so passionately defended bristled at the “fake news” awards bestowed by President Trump on Wednesday. The editors of the Washington Post called the awards “disappointing. There weren’t even plastic trophies—just a list of erroneous stories put out by various networks and newspapers.” CNN’s Jim Acosta complained that “focusing on only a top ten callously overlooks the thousands of other stories that we generated in our campaign against this madman. Whether a story is factually correct is not as important as whether it is politically correct. In that regard our record is unblemished.”

Unsurprisingly, polls show that a majority of voters think the media are biased in their political coverage. More surprising is the admission by 45% of journalists that media coverage of Trump is biased.

Trump Passes Physical, Media Skeptical

This week President Donald Trump underwent a full physical exam carried out by Dr. Ronny Jackson. Unusually, the exam included a test of cognitive abilities. The Doctor, who pronounced his patient to be in good health, was then subjected to a barrage of questions, 80 in all, from the media. A few are shown below.

ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl wanted to know “how can a guy who eats McDonald’s and fried chicken be in good shape?” “It’s called genetics,” Jackson replied.

Brian Stelter, senior media correspondent for CNN, professed himself “unpersuaded that Trump’s apparent fitness should prevent going forward with a 25th Amendment effort to remove him from office.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio dismissed Trump’s physical as “irrelevant. The quack that examined him overlooked the obvious fact that he is insane—his behavior proves it. He is on the wrong side of every political issue. He naively believes that each individual is the best judge of what’s in his own interests. He resists the essential truth that the collective whole of humanity is the relevant entity and that each person is merely a cell in this larger organism. It is crucial to this organism’s survival that the cancer known as Donald Trump be excised.”

Administration to Allow Doctors to Refuse to Perform Abortions

The Trump Administration is crafting new regulations that would reverse Obama Administration rules compelling doctors to perform abortions. The Department of Health and Human Services will establish a division of “conscience and religious freedom protections” within its Office for Civil Rights. Under the new rules, medical personnel could refuse to participate in procedures that violate their faith or conscience.

Adora Slaughter, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called the reversal “a betrayal of the rights granted to women by the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision and actualized by President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. A woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy should not be forced to find a doctor willing to carry out the procedure. All doctors are licensed by the state. The government has a right and an obligation to require them to perform every kind of medical procedure approved by the AMA. To say that a doctor or nurse can refuse supplants the socially determined judgment of the state with the idiosyncratic judgment of selfish individuals. It’s a step backward toward barbarism.”

“The right to terminate an unwanted child is the most fundamental civil right,” Slaughter added. “That Health and Human Services would crush this right via an agency within the Office for Civil Rights stands justice on its head. It will condemn millions of women to unwanted motherhood—effectively reintroducing the involuntary servitude that was abolished by the Civil War and the Constitution’s 13th Amendment.”

In related news, the US House of Representatives passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act by a vote of 241-183. The law would require doctors who perform an abortion in which the baby survives the procedure to render life-saving care to the infant. Every Republican voted for the bill. All but six Democrats voted against it.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), one of the “no” votes, explained his opposition saying, “I see no need for the government to intrude upon the sacred procedure of terminating an unwanted life. I think we should allow people the freedom to decide what to do rather than letting an emotional appeal on behalf of the survivors of a botched abortion to overwhelm the need to balance the interests of all affected parties. The simplistic idea that the surviving child could be adopted, and thus solve the problem, ignores the fact that the birth mother will be haunted by the knowledge that a person she tried to kill still lives somewhere. No woman should have to endure such torment.”

Pair of California Dems Want to Confiscate Business Tax Cut

Assemblymen Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) and Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) are pushing a measure aimed at confiscating half of the business tax cuts resulting from the federal Tax Cuts & Jobs Act for use by the state government.

“Businesses have been exploiting the workers and ripping off customers for too long,” Ting complained. “That Trump’s tax cuts would now further reward them for their predatory behavior is unconscionable. Our measure would expropriate the expropriators and turn half of these unjust tax cuts over to the state for a more socially just redistribution.”

Ting said he is not concerned that his proposed action might spark the departure of some businesses because “that will leave more room for the state to expand its role in directing the utilization of our vast natural resources. The notion that entrepreneurs are of any use at this stage of history is misguided. By eliminating this unnecessary class of parasites the state can more effectively deploy assets that are wrongfully controlled by private interests and achieve the more equitable distribution of wealth foreseen by the great Karl Marx.”

The two men’s proposed lurch toward a more intensified degree of socialism for the State of California is not out-of-step with current state policies and programs. Despite an abundance of natural advantages, according to the Census Bureau, the state now has the highest percentage of inhabitants living in poverty of any state in the nation. High taxes, crippling regulations, and overly generous welfare programs have produced an environment where nearly 20% of the population is now below the poverty line.

Ting denied that these statistics reflected poorly on the state’s socially progressive governing philosophy. “If things were really so bad why would California be such a favored destination for immigrants?” he asked. “I would argue that the influx of these proletarian classes from south of the border affirms the correctness of our path and builds a strong political base for future advances along the same lines.”

“Dreamers” Maybe Aren’t So Dreamy

While Democrats are going all out to ensure that illegal aliens brought to the United States as children can stay and become citizens, it is not at all clear that they would make good citizens. The illegal executive action taken by former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to unilaterally legalize these immigrants—sometimes called “dreamers”–is set to expire in March. Congressional Democrats are threatening to shut down the federal government if Republicans won’t take action to prevent this.

The usual assertion is that these illegal immigrants are as American as their natural born peers. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) maintains that “taking young people who were brought here through no fault of their own, and have never known another country, and kicking them out of America is as dumb as it is counterproductive.”

Well, maybe not. In Arizona, “dreamers” constitute an estimated 2% of the population. They also account for a disproportionately large 8% of the prison population. Illegal immigrants of all ages are 142% more likely to be convicted of a crime than other residents, but that figure rises to 250% among the 18-35 age group. They also tend to commit more serious crimes and are over-represented among convictions for murder, manslaughter, sexual assault and armed robbery.